this fathoming is so deep in my brain i'm not sure how to best explain it, but basically i used to see evermore as an amalgamation of past hurts, but it clicked for me that it's actually a continuation of hoax. it's about whatever was going on between taylor and joe that she was trying to process by fictionalizing their problems on folklore.
"gray november
i've been down since july"
-> folklore came out in july
"i replay my footsteps on each stepping stone
trying to find the one where I went wrong
writing letters
addressed to the fire"
-> the songs being the letters addressed to the fire. she's been down since july, when she started writing folklore to work through whatever happened in their relationship. i used to think this was related to losing her masters/the scott betrayal, but the new context of father figure has crystalized how intertwined these things were in the music.
"i rewind the tape but all it does is pause
on the very moment all was lost
sending signals
to be double crossed"
-> she's going back over whatever this indiscretion was, racking her brain trying to figure out how this could have happened, how she can get past this. she finds no answers, no resolution—only more hurt.
"can't not think of all the cost
and the things that will be lost
oh, can we just get a pause?
to be certain we'll be tall again
...
i'm on waves, out being tossed
is there a line that I could just go cross?"
-> she can't get past whatever has transpired, but she's desperate to get back to a place of feeling good and secure in this relationship. she's so desperate to be back in calm waters that she wonders if there's something she could do to even the playing field. you hurt me, i hurt you back, then we could be even. because the cost of of this being too much to get past is too much to bear. he was her eternal consolation prize, after all. he believed in her when no one else did, and she's not ready to let go of that.
"and when i was shipwrecked
i thought of you
in the cracks of light
i dreamed of you
it was real enough
to get me through
but I swear
you were there"
-> and here she's found her way out. it's not that she needs to cross a line, she just needs to remember how good she seemingly has it despite the hurt. she uses the fact that joe was there for her during a hard time in her life (rep era) to absolve him of whatever he's done that's left her feeling unmoored.
and writing about his indiscretions in this way from folklore to tortured poets is, to me, covering up his scandals. she always gave him plausible deniability for his part in things not working—the fictionalization of folklore/evermore, the premise of looking back without the true explanation of why these feelings were coming up on midnights, and the scapegoat muse on ttpd.
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